Century Rain Part 49

away, or I'll have to call the police."

"In your state? I'd like to see you try."

A taxi sped by, making a special point of sluicing her with dirty brown rainwater. "Just get away from me," she said, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her face as the water seeped into her shoes. "We concluded our business this morning. Or don't you remember the nice termination fee I gave you?"

"Some of that termination fee just bailed you out of trouble," Floyd replied.

"I wasn't worried about him. I was handling things perfectly well until you barged in."

"He was right, though, wasn't he?" Floyd looked at her with an amused expression. He had very deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was a man who either laughed a lot or cried a lot.

"Right about what?"

"You did go into that tunnel. There's no point denying it-I had a tail on you from the moment you left my offices."

"I noticed her," Auger said. "I hate to break the bad news, but she isn't very good."

"She's cheap. The point is that she saw you duck into that tunnel, the one our friend claimed you just came out of."

"I thought you said you weren't following me."

"And I wasn't. Not personally. But given what I'd learned, I wondered if it might be...informative to sit

and wait in Cardinal Lemoine."

Gradually, she felt some of her anger abating, or perhaps being put away for later use. In a softer voice

she said, "Why exactly did you help me? You had nothing to lose by letting that man hand me over to the authorities, which is most likely exactly what he would have done." "Nothing to lose," Floyd said, "except that they'd never have got to the bottom of whatever it is you're up to."

"And you think you have a better chance of that?"

"I'm halfway there," he said.

"Well, that makes two of us," she said, sotto voce.

"I'm sorry?"

She shook her head. "I don't think you're a bad man, Wendell, but I do know that this isn't something

you want to get involved in."

He narrowed one eye. "Now that's hardly the kind of thing you should say if you want me off your case."

Another taxi made a concerted effort to drench her. She stepped away from the kerb, closer to Floyd.

"But why are you on my case? I told you who I am. I explained all about my sister."

Floyd took out a narrow sliver of wood and placed it between his teeth. He bit down on it, making a dry cracking sound. "You did, and it sounded mighty plausible. For about thirty seconds."

"Then why did you let me walk out of your office with the tin?"

Floyd winked at her. "Have a guess. And while you're at it, why don't I drive you somewhere you can get warm and dry and put some colour back into your cheeks?"

"Thanks, but I'll take my chances with the taxis. Failing that I'll walk, or construct some sort of raft."

"My car's just around this corner. I can take you to your hotel or to my office. Either option would offer you a change of clothes and some warm water."

"No," she said, turning away from him again.

Just at that moment, a heavy truck roared past pus.h.i.+ng a tidal wave of toffee-coloured water along the road ahead of it. Auger let out a little shriek of exasperation as a filthy spray enveloped her from head to foot. As the truck veered past, the driver offered a consolatory wave of his hand, as if everything that had just happened was an act of divine fate far beyond his own control.

"Take me to the hotel," she said. "Please."

"At your service," Floyd replied.

From Cardinal Lemoine, Floyd took Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel boulevards, until he reached the nexus of intersecting streets around Montparna.s.se. The few patches of clear sky that had emerged a little while ago had shrivelled away again, as if deciding that the effort simply wasn't worth it. The rain had stopped, but the entire city huddled under a swollen ma.s.s of ominous clouds that seethed and circulated overhead like so many prowling wolves.

"You have to understand things from my point of view," Floyd said, glancing at his pa.s.senger in the rearview mirror. He seemed to be taking his chauffeur duties very seriously and had insisted that she ride in the back, where there was more room. "I was taken on to solve a case. It doesn't matter to me that the man who hired me is now dead. Until the case is closed, I have a duty to find out what happened. All the more so now that my partner is under suspicion of murder."

"But I already told you-" she began.

"You already told me a pack of lies designed to get me to hand over the box," Floyd said. "Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"

"I'd keep your eyes on the road if I were you."

He ignored the remark. "Take this business about you and your sister coming from Dakota."

"What of it?"

"You might have fooled Blanchard, but your accent isn't anything I recognise. I'm not even sure you're

American."

"You obviously don't know your own country very well." Auger s.h.i.+fted in her seat, rearranging the

damp folds of her coat. "By your own admission, you've been in Paris for twenty years. That's easily long enough to have become out of touch."

"If you're from Dakota, then I'm far more out of touch than I thought."

"I can hardly be blamed for your ignorance. Tanglewood is a very small community and we have our

own way of doing things. Have you ever met Mennonites, or Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch?"

Floyd steered the car on to boulevard Edgar Quinet, skirting the huge cemetery at Montparna.s.se. "Not lately," he said.

"Well, then," Auger said, as if this settled the matter conclusively.

The play of cloud-filtered light across the cemetery illuminated a huddle of mourners taking turns to cast

flowers into the open pit of a grave. Their umbrellas merged into a single black canopy, like a private thundercloud.

"Well what?"

"If you'd met any of those people, I'm sure you'd find their accents and manners just as out of the ordinary as my own. Small communities breed their own ways."

"Tanglewood must be very small indeed. Did I tell you I couldn't find it in the gazetteer?"

"I don't recall."

"Anyway," Floyd said, "I can't begin to imagine what business a girl from a small town in Dakota

would have in a Paris Metro tunnel. Or her sister, for that matter." He met her eyes in the mirror. "The thing is, Susan White also had a thing about Cardinal Lemoine. She was observed entering the station with a heavy suitcase and leaving with a light one."

"If there's a significance to that, I'm afraid it quite escapes me."

"According to the late Mister Blanchard, and judging by what I saw when he let me into her room, your

sister had a mania for collecting things. Her room was a holding area for huge numbers of books, magazines and newspapers, maps and telephone directories. It looked as if she collected just about anything she could get her hands on." Floyd waited a beat. "Pretty odd behaviour for a tourist."

"She liked souvenirs."

"By the ton?"

Auger leaned forward. He smelled her perfume: it made him think of roses and spring. "What exactly

are you saying, Mister Floyd? Let's get it out into the open, shall we?"

He turned the car on to boulevard Pasteur, slowing down behind a bus carrying an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Kronenbourg beer. "Your sister's actions simply don't add up."

"I already told you she had mental problems."

"But Blanchard got to know her pretty well, and he never suspected that there was anything wrong with

her head."

"Paranoiacs can be very manipulative."

"What if she wasn't paranoid at all? What if all that was just a story you tried to sell me to throw me off

the scent?"

"You're saying that my sister's actions might have had some rational explanation?"

"Miss Auger." They were off first-name terms now. No more Verity, no more Wendell. "I just watched

you crawl out of a Metro tunnel. Right now I'm about ready to believe anything, up to and including the possibility that the two of you were not sisters at all, but fellow spies."

"So now we're getting to it," she said, rolling her eyes in disbelief. "Let's look at the facts, shall we?" Floyd continued, unperturbed. "Susan White obviously wasn't acting alone. She must have had an accomplice whom she met with in Cardinal Lemoine. The accomplice made the suitcase switch, or emptied the one White was carrying and took the contents away. My guess is that the accomplice then made their way into that self-same tunnel you just came out of. There's obviously something in there that means a great deal to you."

"Go on," she said, her tone mocking. "Let's hear the rest of your preposterous little theory."

"It isn't a whole theory yet, just the start of one."

"I still want to hear what you think you've got."